


i thought you died alone, a long long time ago

by electrumqueen



Category: Charmed (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Canonical Character Death, Codependency, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 22:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5761729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bianca and Chris, in a better world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i thought you died alone, a long long time ago

 

Chris is funny. He’s sweet. He’s so goddamn sarcastic sometimes Bianca says, _You’re gonna cut yourself on that wit, pal._

Sometimes he looks at her like she’s the centre of the universe.

It’s - nobody’s ever looked at her like that. There are a hundred thousand reasons she should walk away. But she doesn’t.

 

Even if sometimes she isn’t sure that he’s looking at her.

Sometimes, she isn’t sure she’s looking at him.

 

-

 

Bianca is four years old and there’s a man on the couch. She’s not supposed to be at home, Mom said, _we have to go, sweetheart,_ and she sounded much more scared than Bianca has ever heard her, but Bianca is here because she left Mr Ears and she wants him back.

There’s a woman in black. She sounds sad. She’s kneeling next to the man; she has her hand on his wrist and she’s saying, “I’m sorry. I love you.”

The man’s chest rises and falls. Up, down. Up again, down again. There is wetness on his cheeks, like he has been crying.

Bianca steps out from behind the couch. “Are you okay?”

She doesn’t know the woman, but she knows the woman will not hurt her. The truth of it is in her bones.

The woman looks at her. “Oh, fuck,” she says. Takes a deep breath. “Go back to Mom, Bianca.”

“Okay,” Bianca says. But she looks over at the man, first. He has dark hair and dark eyelashes and she thinks, he is very beautiful.

 

-

 

The first time Bianca meets Chris, she is nineteen and on a kill order. There is a demon in the Mission who has been hunting witches, and the clan hired the Phoenix to eliminate the rogue factor. Avoid investigation by the Charmed Ones - or worse, Wyatt Halliwell.

She’s cool with that. Something about Wyatt Halliwell’s name sets her teeth on edge.

She’s about to kill him - he’s scaly and bright orange, with big teeth - when something jumps out of the walls and knocks her to the ground.

“They never work alone,” says a boy, offering her a hand up. “I’m Chris.” There is something startled in the way he looks at her, something alarmed and wondering.

“Bianca,” she says. Struck by the green of his eyes. “I’m Bianca.”

“Hi, Bianca,” Chris says. “Duck!”

 

He is not technically a Charmed One; in this way, Bianca gracefully avoids the truth and gets the full bounty she was promised. They didn’t tell her there would be two of them, anyway.

 

-

 

She dreams of another life. It smells like ash, and smoke, and blood.

The man from the couch is there. He holds her hand and tells her, _run._

In the dreams she kills for him and he kills for her. They are watched, over all of it, by a man in black, who bears a gleaming, hungry sword.

Bianca dreams about green eyes and a wry, startled laugh. She loves him, this boy, this man. She loves him like she has just invented the word.

 

She wakes up and shakes her head, trying to clear it of green eyes and warm hands.

She tries to kiss other men: real men, men who can see her in daylight. Men who smell like cologne and not magic and panic and courage in the face of all evil.

It’s never the same.

 

-

 

She doesn’t see Chris often. Only when she’s in real trouble.

After she leaves the clan, he’s at the bar. He can’t be old enough but he buys her a drink. “Good band,” he says. Green eyes, shaggy hair. Big red x’s on the back of his hands.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Bad night,” he offers.

“Not great,” she agrees.

 

She couldn’t kill people anymore. Not after dreaming about it so much it hurt her bones. She couldn’t be a weapon; she told her mother and her mother said, _you’re a woman, Bianca, that’s what happens. At least this way you’ll have a blade about it. At least this way you can say no if you want._

 _I’m saying no now,_ Bianca said, and walked out. Her birthmark stung. Her heart stung worse.

 

“You’re twelve,” she says, to Christopher Halliwell, who looks at her like she’s someone worth seeing.

“I’m sixteen,” he counters, brave like sixteen year olds always are. “Look, just let me walk you home. I have a weird feeling.”

She should say no, but she doesn’t.

Later, she will read _Childhood’s End_ and think, _we are all drawn to our own destruction._

 

There is an ambush outside her front door.

“Fucking _shit_ ,” Chris says, bringing up his hands, throwing the woman into the wall. Telekinesis. Cool. He’s stronger since she saw him last.

The assassin is Bianca’s baby cousin. She’s holding a knife. The kind you kill with.

 _You can’t just walk away,_ Mom said.

“Get out of here,” she tells him.

 _One last kill._ She can do it.

“No,” he says. “You don’t have to do this.”

 

They leave Lana tied up on her mother’s doorstep. They use the good rope; the kind you use on kidnap jobs where there’s a hefty bounty for a return in good condition.

Bianca kneels and kisses Lana’s forehead. “Sorry,” she says. “Be good, kiddo.”

 

She will think of this, later, as the first time he saved her.

 

-

 

In her dreams she trains stronger and harder. She tells a man in black that she’ll swear his oath of fealty.

San Francisco is burning.

She is a phoenix. She knows how to be on fire.

 

She wakes up and goes to her job at a bank. She pretends not to see demons. She ignores her mother’s calls and goes out with John, then Drew, then Alexander.

She bumps into Chris on Pier 39; they stand and watch the sea lions, who in her dreams have fled. She needs to be reminded they are here, and they are well.

She keeps a dagger in her sleeve and flashes it, very fast, so the demon on his tail bursts into flame.

_Still got it, B._

 

-

 

She doesn’t see him at all, the year she is twenty-one. But the dreams are relentless. Their world is darker, more terrifying. The girl she is when she dreams is covered in ash, and dust, and blood.

She descends to the underworld. She is Jason, and Orpheus, and Odysseus with a pitcher of cows’ blood.

He is Persephone. Green-eyed and beautiful, at the right hand of the king of hell. Or perhaps Eurydice, because she can bring him out.

 

 _If you can protect him, he can leave,_ says Hades, who is Wyatt Halliwell, who rules all the worlds. He waves a hand and a clan of nightmares array themselves in front of her, swords drawn. She does not look behind her, after that. There is no point in that.

She fights her way out of the underworld and takes a deep breath. The air is not clear but it is clearer. The sun is bright but she stares at it anyway.

“I’m Chris,” says Green Eyes, smiling. He too is looking up, at the sun. “Thanks for saving me. It’s been a long time since I was allowed out.”

 

She drinks her way through Eastern Europe and saves a couple of minor villages from ancestral demons, acting with terror. They teach her how to sleep without dreams in thanks, but she only does it once: she misses the other world, strange as it is, dark as it is. In that world, she matters.

 

In her dreams, he is the princess and she is the knight in leather armour. They walk through a world of ash and dust and everyone bows, because the king is his brother.

 

-

 

She finds him in Golden Gate Park. The statue of the angel has its head.

He is sitting on the bench staring up at the sun but he turns to meet her eyes, and raises a hand in welcome.

“I know you,” Bianca says, tripping over her own words. This is urgent; this is the most important question in the world. She should have asked it long ago. “Why do I know you?”

“We met when I was seventeen,” says Christopher Halliwell. “You were supposed to make sure I didn’t die. I did a pretty shitty job of it. You were always bailing me out.”

She swallows. There is a cut on the inside of her lip where she has bitten it. “You’d walk right into those demon nests, trying to save innocents. It pissed Wyatt off so bad. I thought, for sure he was going to get sick of your shit and just put you in the dungeons until you got your shit together.” She doesn’t know where it’s come from. She’s never even met Wyatt Halliwell. But there is nothing she knows more to be true.

“What an asshole,” Chris says. Grins, bright-eyed, lovely. He has a hell of a smile. She thought that even when she thought he was full of shit, before she realized that actually, he was going to save the world.

“He never did,” she says, thoughtful. She shakes her head. “Wyatt Halliwell- the best witch to ever live.”

“A sociopath who took over the world the year I turned fifteen,” Chris says, wry. “You and I, we went back to fix it so he wouldn’t grow up evil. It worked. But that old universe had to go somewhere.”

“You and me,” Bianca says, slow, and full of wonder. Everything makes sense, now. She has lived her whole life in the dark. “You said, _Can I kiss you?_ You were eighteen and I thought you were so brave and so stupid. Your brother was so angry and I thought we were going to die. So I said _yes,_ and I didn’t mean to, but I kissed you back.”

“I talked him out of it,” Chris says. He’s still smug, like he was there. What a dick. “I’m good at that, even here. I’m the Wyatt-whisperer, just ask anyone.”

“Oh my god,” Bianca says. “Chris. _Chris._ ” It is like her heart has been ripped open, and laid bare. And he is looking upon it, upon her most vulnerable places, and calls them beautiful.

“I know,” he says. His smile is the sun, after that first trek out of the dark. He holds out his arms and pulls her in. “I’m here. We made it. We won.”

 

-

 

She has never had a best friend before.

Now she can’t imagine what it would be like not to be with him.

No part of her wants to even try.

 

His family don’t trust her, not even a little.

That’s fine. She doesn’t need them.

She only needs him. Nobody else in the world: just Chris.

That’s reality. That’s the truth. That’s what she understands, better than anything else.

He understands her and she understands him: there is no world beyond that, except for the one in their dreams.

 

-

 

There are pictures of Chris, when he was twenty-two, and came back to save the future. They’re kept in a special album he’s not supposed to know about but her best friend, he’s a smart kid.

“This one’s my favourite,” Chris says. Her Chris: eighteen and loose limbed. Not so haunted as the one she dreams about, but not as bright-eyed as the boy he pretends to be.

She leans in. It is the man on her mother’s couch, the one who was crying. He is holding a small tow-headed blond child. The boy is smiling up at him, like he’s the sun and moon and stars.

“Future king of the world,” she says, thoughtful.

“Nah,” Chris says. “Just a nerd who really likes to read about the history of magic.” He smiles. But there’s a little darkness in the back of his eyes: not quite sure.

 

-

 

She dreams about Wyatt. She is starting to draw a line between the woman in the dreams and the woman she wakes to become. They are not the same, even if sometimes the waking girl wishes she had that kind of hideous, enormous strength.

The other Bianca is so afraid. They are pretending to be in his employ and every time she sees him she thinks, _this is the end, he knows, it is over._ But it never is.

He is kind to her, because Chris likes her. But it is a kindness with sharp edges: conditional.

The girl she dreams can handle that. Mostly. As long as she doesn’t think about it too hard.

He tells her, _take care of my brother_ and she says, _yes sir, of course, sir._ She does not say, _I would anyway._ She does not say, _I think I am falling in love._

 

She meets Wyatt, this Wyatt. The Wyatt they saved. He is a sunshine boy with a broad, sweet smile; kindness rolls off him in waves. He holds out his hand to shake and she sees - _blood, Excalibur, death_ \- and feels her body shimmer and disappear.

 

Chris finds her in the park, underneath the statue of the angel.

“I’m sorry,” he says, kneeling beside her, holding out his hands. His fingers are long and clean and free of blood. “B, I’m so sorry.”

“He almost killed you,” she says. She thinks she’s shaking. She thinks she’s going to throw up. “He would have killed you. We betrayed him and he loved you.”

“You’re safe,” Chris says, urgent, imperative. A voice she trusts; a voice that she has always believed. “You’re safe, and I’m safe. It’s okay. We saved the world.”

 

-

 

“How do you do it?” she asks. “How do you love him? You know what he did.”

Chris looks down, and away. His eyelashes are so delicate. “I have to,” he says. “He’s my brother.”

 

She wakes up, heart going too fast, triple-time.

This is hate, she thinks; but you put aside hate, for love.

 

-

 

She doesn’t kiss him. She can’t kiss him.

That is Bianca’s. It belongs to the other her.

She is so afraid that she will do it wrong. That she won’t be worth it, what they gave up. There is so much to live up to.

 

She thinks Chris is afraid too. If he wasn’t he would kiss her, but instead they orbit each other, like satellites. They introduce each other to boys and girls who come and go, and every time pretend they matter.

 

It took the other Bianca a long time to realize she was in love with the other Chris. She had saved his life a hundred times, as he had saved hers: mostly it was because he dragged her along on all his schemes to try and save the innocents that his brother had left foundering, but she didn’t mind. If she didn’t want to go she would have stopped him; knocked him out, dragged him back down past Cerberus, into the king’s waiting arms.

She knew he loved her. That was easy to tell: he was not a good liar, not to her, nor to Wyatt, either. (She learned, very quick, that all they did was under the king’s sufferance; a sop to keep his little brother smiling, and hopeful, and shy of full scale rebellion.)

She knew he didn’t think she loved him back. She had been tasked with his guard and that complicated things, made everything harder. He would never have asked her, because to ask would have brought his brother’s wrath on them both.

 

She didn’t know what she wanted. Didn’t know what love was: she knew about safety, and honour, and he had taught her about doing the right thing, so she could do that.

But she woke up one morning and looked into the sun and thought, _I would die if you died;_ and so she went to him and said, _kiss me_ and he stared at her and then he did.

 

-

 

Bianca turns twenty-three. In the other world, they go to war; they finally stop pretending they are Wyatt’s creatures, and take up arms against him. Wyatt captures her and makes her bleed so Chris will watch, and Chris will give in.

Chris says, _Kill her then_. _This is a war. You wanted one; it’s here._ The line of his jaw is firm and steady. His gaze does not waver. She is so proud.

 

She wakes up screaming and finds Chris in her bed, curled into a tight sobbing ball.

She shakes him awake. “Chris. Chris.” _I love you._

“Bianca,” he says, and opens his eyes. “He was going to kill you.” She has heard so him afraid, but never in this world, only in the other.

She leans forward, forehead to forehead, her breath and his breath steady, in time. “You saved me,” she says. “You always do.”

He forces a smile. “Except when you save me.”

But it will come to an end: he won’t save her, and she won’t save him.

 

They sort of know how the story goes. They are living time as it unfurls, but there is a record: an older Chris, stabbed in the chest; Chris who said to his mother about the woman he loved, _she won’t be a threat to anyone, anymore._

Bianca wonders what it will feel like to die. She feels like she has already lived a hundred little deaths: near escapes, almost-fatalities. The things she has done, that perhaps eradicate her right to live. The other Bianca lives so close to death they could kiss.

 

-

 

 _How do I know if I love him?_ She wants her mother. She wants to sit in the big armchair and have her mother stroke her hair. There are so many complexities to Bianca now. She has lived so many lives.

Is this Bianca in love with this Chris? Or is it just an echo, the Bianca from before, from a universe over, who died so that this world might live? She’s owed her due, Bianca thinks. That woman is owed a victory.

 

“You loved him,” says Phoebe Halliwell. Phoebe is the one who likes her: everyone else looks at her carefully, as though she will pull out a knife and start ruining everyone’s lives. “I mean. She did. I guess you aren’t her.”

“No,” Bianca says. “They’re not the ones in question. They loved each other so much. I don’t know if I could ever love anyone that much. Like that.” It is so terrifying sometimes, the scope of it, that love. Sometimes Bianca dreams about it, and when she wakes she thinks she is on fire.

“We could take them away,” Phoebe says, quietly. “It wouldn’t be hard. You could live your own life, without these nightmares.”

“No,” Bianca says. She shakes her head. “She died for us. for this. So we could be happy, so we could be free. The least I can do is remember her.”

Phoebe smiles, wry and thoughtful. She really is beautiful. “That’s what Chris said, too.”

 

-

 

The dreams are getting worse, because the war is worse. Nobody trusts Chris, because he is Wyatt’s brother; nobody trusts Bianca, because she is Chris’ right hand. Nobody will listen to them. Nobody will let them _help._

They run suicide mission after suicide mission. That’s all they’re allowed to do, because everyone knows Wyatt won’t hurt his little brother. (It is Bianca who is at risk, because everyone knows if you hurt Bianca, you hurt Chris. but that’s okay. Bianca’s lived her whole life getting hurt.

She’s a phoenix, remember? Ashes come from flames.)

 

They save who they can. Triage.

Chris hates it and Bianca does, too.

Late at night, they talk about killing his brother; in secret, Chris’ head bowed with the shame of it. But Wyatt Halliwell is Arthur’s heir: magic itself would not allow his murder. All they can do is survive, and help, as best they are able.

 

Wyatt finds the rebellion in Arizona. He wipes them out.

All of them.

Except for Chris, and because of Chris, Bianca.

“You didn’t want to kill me,” Wyatt says. “That’s why you’re alive. And you’re my brother.”

He hurts her, not Chris. She does not want to give him the satisfaction, but she screams, anyway, and begs him to let her go. He doesn’t, of course. Most power wins, and when you win you can do whatever you want.

Still, she endures.

 

-

 

“I’m sorry,” Wyatt says. “Bianca, I’m so sorry.”

They told him not to read Chris’ mind, but Chris could not deny him. He wanted to know. He had the right to.

He didn’t do it, though. This Wyatt is not the one who hurts her while she sleeps; he’s not the one who rips the world apart and laughs. He’s not the one who makes the Chris she dreams about become so ugly she has to look away.

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “You’re not him.”

“I look just like him,” Wyatt says. He looks ill. Pale, and sick, and vulnerable. If she wanted to, now would be the time to strike the killing blow. “We have the same face. The same blood. The same bones.”

“You would never hurt anyone,” she says. She knows it’s true. More than that: it’s what he needs to hear.

 

The other Bianca is so good at telling people what they want to hear. She and the other Chris had to be. It’s how they survived.

It’s how they won the war.

 

-

 

Chris and Wyatt take her on demon hunts, sometimes. She is a little rusty but the Bianca in the dreams is razor-sharp; it balances out.

She is starting to be able to handle Wyatt. She does not think about blood so much; she thinks about terrible jokes, and the way he makes Chris roll his eyes, and smile.

She _likes_ Wyatt. She likes him a lot.

It’s just that sometimes, when she looks at him, she cannot fight the urge to flee.

Sometimes the other Bianca dreamed about him, with longing. There is something about the architect of your own end. Intoxicating.

 

Sometimes, afterwards, Piper makes them all dinner and looks at Bianca like she isn’t going to rip Chris’ heart out of his chest and eat it, right in front of them.

 _You’re moving on up there,_ Wyatt says, laughing. _Maybe one day she won’t cut all your pictures out of the photo album._

She throws a balled up Kleenex at him and smiles.

 

Bianca wraps her arms around her knees. “I miss my mom,” she says. She’s twenty-four years old. She dreams about the end of the world constantly: sometimes when she blinks she sees the Golden Gate, falling into the Bay.

She wants her mother. She wants Mom to wrap her up in her arms, in her floral perfume, and tell her everything will be okay. It’s not like Bianca’s mother ever really said that. That’s more of a Piper Halliwell thing to say. It’s more the principle of the thing.

Chris tangles his fingers in hers. “I’m sorry,” he says. He is so warm.

The other Chris, his mother died when he was fourteen. It’s not the same, but it’s something.

 

-

 

Chris proposes. She says _yes._

He says, _marry me_ like he says _let’s save the world._ In the same breath, like they’re the same struggle.

 

Bianca wakes up, sobbing. _I’m not ready,_ she says. _I’m not ready to go._

Nobody will tell them what happened. The other Chris refused to give them too much information. The Halliwells refuse to give them all of what they know.

 

But they know that the end doesn’t come much after the proposal, because the ring was new.

She hopes she will not die alone. This is something she thinks the other her could not bear, and so she could not bear it, either.

 

-

 

Something is stirring in the underworld. Chris raises an eyebrow at her and says, “You wanna?”

“Why not?” she says. “We were just gonna get pizza and compare dreams, anyway.”

They are putting together a complete timeline of what happened to the world. They think they are getting closer to understanding it; so are the people they almost were, who are hatching a plan that sounds so, so stupid, if you don’t know that it worked.

She doesn’t know why it feels so important to do it, but it does. Like maybe if they can puzzle it out, they’ll find something their counterparts missed. Find a way to save them, too.

 

There is this one picture, of the older Chris. Piper took it when he wasn’t looking: he’s sitting on the couch, with the book of shadows. He looks so tired and so brave.

She should put it away but she can’t. She keeps it tucked in her back pocket, next to the dagger in her belt.

 

They stop the war in the underworld. They’re pretty dangerous, the two of them. They grew up ruthless, and lean, and hungry.

She starts wearing a lot of black. It’s just - easy. Leather is durable, and doesn’t show stains.

 

-

 

Chris turns twenty-two. This dumb plan is going to go through.

“We’re idiots,” Bianca says, sitting cross-legged on Chris’ bed in the shitty apartment he and Wyatt rent. “This is the stupidest _save the world_ plan I can think of.”

“Hey,” Chris says. “Could be worse. They almost tried the thing with the werepuppies.”

The other Chris and the other Bianca have this cave, in the ice wastes. They’ve covered the walls with a history of the world, of Wyatt; trying to figure out where he turned.

This Chris and this Bianca make do with Chris’ bedroom. They have posterboard up on the walls like the projects she made for school when she was a kid, and hundreds of Google spreadsheets. They just want to know what happened. Is that so bad?

They have hunted down every demon they have seen in that other universe. They are building a better world.

“Part of me wants them to survive,” Bianca says. “Part of me wants them to give up on this. at least - they could be safe, if they did that. It’s hell out there, but at least they wouldn’t die.”

“You don’t mean that,” Chris says, very quiet.

“No,” Bianca says. “I don’t.”

 

-

 

Chris goes back in time. Bianca watches him walk through the portal and then Wyatt grabs her by the throat.

 

“Why didn’t I take you with me?” Chris says, angrily. Noting it down, _first day in the past._

“Paradoxical,” she says, thinking about what to omit from her own account: _first day in captivity_. The other Bianca wouldn’t want any Chris to know what Wyatt did to her, to make her go through and get him back. “I was already born.”

 

The other Bianca goes back to find the other Chris. Part of Bianca wishes, desperately, that she might succeed, that they could be together, at least.

The wash of her love is overwhelming: Bianca wakes and sits up and stares at the ceiling.

She could go to Chris now. She could kiss him.

That is why they saved the world.

But she does not. She wraps her arms around her knees, and rocks away from the force of that other Bianca’s love. This Bianca has not earned it.

 

-

 

Bianca dies when she is twenty-five. Wyatt throws her into a table leg and the pain is enormous, incredible. She is almost stunned by how much it hurts.

More than that, she is stunned that it has finally happened. The other Bianca had thought, perhaps, she was invincible.

Chris holds her, weeping. The other Chris, with his beautiful eyes.

 _I thought you would die,_ she thinks. _I just wanted to save you._ She and the other Bianca are tangled so tight in the force of that wanting: for a moment she believes that she is dead, and it feels like relief.

 

“She was so young,” Bianca says. She can’t breathe. She’s forgotten how to breathe. “ _I’m_ so young.”

Chris wraps his arms around her, holds her close. His breath is hot and desperate on the base of her throat. “You’re okay,” he says. Repeats it, again and again. Like a mantra. “You’re okay, you’re alive, you’re here.”

“I’m here,” she says. “I’m alive. She isn’t, but I am.”

They are both crying so hard it hurts.

He pulls away, and she freezes, like she’s been struck, like she is dying all over again, but the force of his gaze is eternal, everlasting.

He kisses her and she kisses back.

It is so good to be alive. It is so good to kiss him. It is everything she thought it would be; everything she remembers.

 

-

 

Wyatt finds the map. He stares at them, both of them, in sheer horror. “Are you kidding?” he says. “This is _insane._ ”

“How do you think we found all those demons?” Chris asks. Right in Wyatt’s face, like the Chris she remembers. “There are _exact parallels_ to people we can save right now.”

“This is killing you,” Wyatt says, holding out his hands, palm open, desperate. “This is killing you both.”

Bianca folds her hands together. “No,” she says. “I’m already dead. Thanks for that, Wyatt. It really hurt.”

 

He flinches, steps back. Like she’s slapped him, like he’s been stabbed.

_Already happened, bud._

Chris says, “Wyatt-”

“I’m sorry,” Wyatt says. He shakes his head and disappears.

 

“I shouldn’t have,” she says.

Chris bumps his shoulder against hers. “It happens.”

 

-

 

They only have one person to track, now. Just Chris. Chris Perry, in San Francisco, 2003.

“It’s not like there’s anything we can _do,_ ” Chris says. “It’s done, they’re saved. Everyone is safe, now.”

Bianca waits.

“But he’s going to die,” Chris says. “We know he’s going to die. On my birthday. My twenty-third birthday.”

It is not so far away.

 

They spend it in the underworld. They are a well-oiled machine. It means they do not have to think.

Then Chris collapses, and she takes him home to the Manor.

 

Wyatt flinches when he sees her. But he hugs her anyway, and she hugs him back. We all make sacrifices for the ones we love.

They let her sit at Chris’ side until he wakes up: the Phoenix and the Halliwells, with their tired eyes. They have, after all, seen this before.

“Bianca,” he says, wide eyed, gasping. He looks for her like she is north and he is a compass point.

She smiles. “Just me,” she says. Her heart hurts.

“Me too,” he says.

Both of them look away.

 

-

 

Chris’ room feels pointless, now. They were solving a mystery and it has ended. They couldn’t do anything in the end; they couldn’t change anything. Just watch. Just bear witness: you lived, and you mattered.

And now it is over.

 

“We should take it all down,” she says.

He nods.

They burn it in the yard and she looks up at the stars. The sky is so clear, here. No smoke; no demons. The other Bianca would have been so excited to see it. So proud.

She kisses his cheek. “I wouldn’t have done this with anyone else,” she says.

 

She remembers being Orpheus; when she walked into the dark to bring him out of it, and the sun blinded them both.

It is so strange, to no longer be at war.

 

He kisses her forehead. “Thank you,” he says.

Like, goodbye.

 

-

 

Bianca has never been so alone before. There is no other her, no decision that was already made.

She thinks, this is how normal people live.

She thinks, it has been so long since she was awake.

 

She didn’t think she could live without him, but she can. It is the other Bianca she misses more.

The Bianca who taught her she could be strong.

 

But she is here, in Bianca’s heart, in the nightmares she still wakes from, drenched in sweat. In her hopes.

It is not so bad to be alone, for a little while.

 

-

 

Bianca is a Phoenix. That world was ash, and so she rises.

 

-

 

Bianca is twenty-seven, in a bar in Los Angeles. She has two tabs open in her phone’s browser: her readings for law school, and an online Book of Shadows entry on the thing that’s been eating cats in her neighbourhood. She is wearing white. It brings out the warmth in her skin tone, her roommate tells her.

A guy walks in. Dark hair, green eyes. Best cheekbones she’s seen in a while. “Buy you a drink?”

 

A long time ago, a girl and a boy kissed in the shadow of a broken bridge and a headless angel, and then they saved the world.

Now they are dead.

Bianca exhales, and lets them go.

 

“Okay,” she says. “I’m Bianca.”

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Chris.”

His eyes are green, like spring. Like a whole new world.

 

 


End file.
